


I Know You

by KyloTrashForever



Series: Oneshots [39]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Sex, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Light Angst, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer, i had a lot of feelings okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 13:23:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21137396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/pseuds/KyloTrashForever
Summary: “You’re actually here.”“Yes,” he murmurs. “I am.”“You knew I would come.”“I did.”“And you waited?”“I’m always waiting,” he tells her softly, thumb sliding against her cheek. “I’ve always been waiting for you.”A Rise of Skywalker Trailer One Shot.





	I Know You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, are y’all still alive after the trailer? I am not. Consider me dead. This is sappy af. I’m sorry.

* * *

* * *

Her fingers ache with the force of her grip, but still she hangs on. The climb through the ruins is difficult, but a voice inside tells her to keep going. To push _ forward. _She has long since learned to heed that voice. 

Every facet of this place holds a memory—dark, terrible memories that stain the wreckage like an inky black she can almost imagine touching. The soot and dust that coat her fingers seems a fitting remembrance of all this place wrought when it stood in its full glory.

Nothing but ash and death. 

She makes a jump for a fallen beam—leaping out from the teetered walkway and grabbing for the edge as she scrambles to hang on.

_ Almost there. _

She feels the pull that brought her here, feels the tug of that same _ something _ that binds her very soul like a thread that she can almost see, almost _ touch— _ following after it blindly in search of whatever it is the Force wants her to see. Whatever it is it needs her to _ know. _

There is a brighter light above, and she climbs for it, feeling the way her resolve strengthens, feeling that hum just under her skin that tells her she is on the right course. 

Following it ever faithfully.

She finds her footing to grip the ledge above, releasing a sound of struggle as she works the upper muscles of her body to hoist herself up. Her feet find purchase on a broken ledge, pushing and pulling herself until the platform above comes into view. Her arms rest against the floor, suspended for a moment as she takes in something she’s only ever heard of in passing. 

Dragging herself the rest of the way, she just manages to pull herself up to her knees, pressing to stand as she dusts away what she’s able to from her clothes. For a moment she can only turn about the room, letting the power of it touch her skin, _ feeling _ the mark left on this place. Like a scar, healed but running deep—power and loss and _ hope _and despair bleeding from these ruins as if all that occurred had only happened yesterday. 

The crackle in the air is her only warning, but then again, had she really needed one? Had she really not known what awaited her here? She lights her saber, its steady hum calming her even though she knows deep down inside she doesn’t need it.

“You’re here.”

She can hear his steady breath, deafening in this tomb. “I am.”

“How are you _ always _ here?”

She thinks he laughs, some sharp and brief expulsion of air from his nostrils. “Because the Force is a cruel and fickle thing.”

“Or perhaps it’s trying to tell you something,” she counters, still unable to turn and look at him. 

“And what is it trying to tell me?”

She does turn then, still unprepared for the sight of him even after all this time. Still so jarred by what it _ does _ to her. “That you’re on the wrong _ path,” _she tells him breathlessly, gripping her saber just a little tighter as it points to the floor.

“My path,” he laughs softly, looking down at the wreckage strewn amongst their feet. “I have spent my entire life trying to find my _ path. _It’s been a fool's errand.”

“Because you’ve been on the wrong _ one.” _

He gives her a long look, his eyes dark and tired. “You’re so sure,” he answers quietly. “So sure that I am who you think I can be.”

She sweeps a hand around the room, gesturing to the rubble lit up by the filtered sunlight from outside. “Look at where we _ are, _Ben.”

His eyes pass over the remnants of a long-forgotten past slowly, drinking it in as he tells her quietly, “My grandfather defeated an emperor here.”

She takes a step without meaning to, fists clenched. “Your grandfather found _ redemption _here.”

“It is just a throne room,” he murmurs. “Nothing more.” His gaze flicks back to her face then, studying. “The last time we were in a throne room, you left me.”

“You deserved it then.”

He nods, looking down at the floor and not even bothering to argue. “And do I now? Do I deserve it still?”

“I don’t know,” she tells him truthfully.

“Then why are you here, Rey? You have to know that for as long as you open yourself to my presence, I will be there.”

“I don’t know that either,” she whispers.

His jaw tightens. “Don’t you?”

“I—” Her grip at the hilt of her saber goes just a little slack, looking down at the floor as the words sit heavy on her tongue. “I still don’t know my place in all this. I’ve—I’ve tried to do what I feel is right, but I—” She swallows thickly. “I still feel so alone.”

He takes a step, just one single step with extended knee, hands at his sides as if she is some wounded animal he is afraid to frighten further. “Perhaps… I am not the only one on the wrong path.”

She stares back at him, such space between and yet feeling the warmth of his gaze as if it were a brush of his hand against her cheek. Her voice is airy and light, her words no more than a ghost in the air of this haunted place. “People keep telling me they know me.” Her fingers barely cling to the saber now, months and _ months _ of something she’s kept hidden bubbling to the surface. Remnants of things she felt in another throne room, what felt like a lifetime ago. “They tell me what I am, what I’m meant to be, meant to _ do— _they think they know me.” She feels a wet sting at her eyes, frustration and uncertainty forcing its way out of where she’s kept it locked away. “No one does.”

He takes another step, a _ real _ one this time—and she feels the weight of it, feels the closing of the distance like a tangible thing. “It’s because they need you for what you are.” Another step, and she counters by taking a step behind without thinking, giving him pause. His voice lowers. “You are what they want you to be,” he tells her. “What they _ need _ you to be.” His eyes never leave hers. “And so they will never understand you. Never _ know you—_” He doesn’t move, doesn’t _ breathe_—but still she feels his presence as if his skin touches hers. “_—but I do.” _

Her hands shake, making it difficult now to hold her saber. “Ben—”

“I asked you to join me once,” he breathes, taking another step. “You denied me.”

“I had to. You wanted—I couldn’t—”

“But you have yet”—his hands rise to hang suspended in the air, outstretched in a calming motion—“to ask me to join _ you.” _

Her breath hitches, able to count the threads in his tunic for the thin space between them now. “And would you? If I asked?”

“Rey, I would—” He falters, studying her face and seeing all that she is, she thinks. Just as he always has. “You’ll find there isn’t much that I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Is that why you came here?”

“I came because the Force willed it,” he answers, and she feels something sinking in her chest, until: “I stayed for you. Always for you.”

She hears the thud of her saber before she even recognizes she’s let it go, the steady hum dissolving into silence as it rolls away. Ben stands just in front of her now, the lines of his face so near she could reach out and touch them if she wanted to, and she does. She always has. 

But Ben beats her to it. 

The first brush of his gloved hand against her skin is jarring, but not for any of the reasons it should be. It feels… heavier somehow. There is no thin veil of time and space stretching between them that she’s become accustomed to in times like this. There is only the warmth that rests beneath the thick fabric. There is only _ him. _

She gasps in surprise, whispering, “You’re actually _ here_.”

“Yes,” he murmurs. “I am.”

“You knew I would come.”

“I did.”

“And you waited?”

“I’m always waiting,” he tells her softly, thumb sliding against her cheek. “I’ve always been waiting for you.”

She closes her eyes, turning her face into his touch as if by instinct. She hasn’t felt like this since a night that seems forever ago. The sun hadn’t been shining then. The only light to be had was that of a crackling fire, warmth she’d felt inside having nothing to do with it. 

“It won’t be easy,” she breathes.

He toys with a stray tendril of hair that rests against her nape. “Nothing good ever is.”

The tips of her fingers brush against his hand that still hangs at his side, not quite touching but _ so close. _“You have seen him. You’ve seen our enemy.”

“I have.”

“And you would stand against him?”

“I would stand with _ you_.”

“Even if they don’t accept you? Even if they don’t accept _ us?” _

“I don’t care about anyone else, Rey. I have seen that apart we will not survive this. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, but I won’t allow you to fall.” He turns up her face, and she allows her eyelashes to flutter open, meeting the warmth of his gaze that seems to burn into the very marrow of her bones. “Not when you’re destined to _ rise _.”

She swallows, her tongue a dry, useless thing in her mouth, her lips parted and _ begging _ and the way he _ looks _at her, and she—

“I’m not alone,” she whispers.

“You never will be.”

Then everything is silent—and there is nothing but the feel of his lips against hers. 

She’s trembling, as his hands find her face, cupping it and pulling her to his, but so is he. His big body seems more fragile like this, shaking against her and cradling her face as if she’s something precious. There is a part of her that knew she would find him here, when she started this, but there is a part of her that knows _ every _road ends with him. 

There is a wetness at her cheeks, and she can’t be sure if it is hers, if it is his—too lost in the way he takes from her hungrily, in the way he seems to try and take her inside himself with only his mouth. 

“You’ll come back with me.” It's not a question, not really. Words are more difficult between the brush of lips that neither of them seem to be able to stop. “You’ll stay.”

“I’ll stay,” he rasps. “I’ll be wherever you need me.”

“And we’ll end this,” she gasps, his hand curling around her hip to squeeze. “Together.”

“Together.”

Her hands reach for his, prying them from her face and holding them between their bodies. She presses her lips to the gloved ends of his fingers. “Take these off. Please.” She closes her eyes. “You don’t need them.”

She only looks up at him when he pulls away, watching as he brings his hand to his mouth, pulling the glove away with his teeth. She watches it fall to the floor, and then another joins it, and then he’s _ touching her—_fingers tracing down her throat, her shoulder—moving higher until his thumb brushes up-and-down her jaw reverently. 

“I’ve thought about nothing but touching you since that first time,” he murmurs. “You’re the only person I’ve touched in years. The only person I’ve _ wanted _to.”

Her heart beats a heavy rhythm in her chest. “Then touch me.” She’s thought about it. Day, night, every moment in between… she hasn’t _ stopped _thinking about it. “Touch me, Ben.”

And Ben… Ben doesn’t hesitate. 

It isn’t the place for it, there isn’t _ time _ for it—but she wants to know all of him, to leave an imprint of herself against him. She wants everything there is, everything he _ has _—she wants it all.

So he lets it happen, when she tugs at his tunic. When she bares the pale flesh that is littered with scars, some she has given him and some she has not, kissing each one as if her touch can heal them. Wishing it could. 

And she allows it, when he pulls down her hair, when he buries his face in it as his thick fingers work at her belt. She allows it because it’s all she’s thought about, all she’s _ wanted— _and they deserve this, she thinks. They deserve this moment of calm before the storm that she knows is coming. 

It isn’t how she imagined it, when she allowed herself to—on the broken floor of a tainted memory. His cape and his dark clothes are not the soft bed she pictured, the hurried nature not the tone she’d envisioned—but his hands are as warm as she dreamt they'd be. His touch just as frantic. His whispered words sinking down inside her just as deep, just as deep as _ he _ is—his body moving over her and _ through _ her—his cock thick and warm and _ filling m_—filling her up. Filling her until there is nothing left. Nothing left but _ him. _

She clings to his shoulders as he tells her that he’ll never leave her. That she’ll never be _ alone. _ He murmurs hoarsely about what he wants to do to her. What he wants to do _ with _her. He speaks of ceremonies long forgotten. He presses a hand to her belly and tells her he wants to fill it, too. That he wants every part of her. Everything that she is. 

And she will give it. She thinks then that she already has. 

They lie there after, on their bed of dusty clothes—and Rey thinks it couldn’t be more perfect. Because Ben’s fingers wind with hers, his body holds her prisoner. In a short while they will have to collect themselves, they will have to leave this moment behind and lock it away until they are safe to revisit it. Until there is a place for them. 

Rey cannot know when that is, or where it will be, or even _ how _it will come about—but it doesn’t matter. 

She knows it’s coming. She knows ahead there is a place for them. Somewhere they’ll carve out all on their own. Because no one knows her, not really. No one ever has. 

No one but him. 

“Ben,” she whispers after a time. 

His lips graze against her hair. “Hm?”

“I know you, too.”

He holds her tighter, _ closer—_as close as she can be, as close as she _ needs. _

“Yes,” he answers. “You do.”

Rey thinks to herself that it’s enough. 

It’s more than enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
Come say hi on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/kylotrashforever)!  
I made a [Twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/KTF_Reylo), come follow me!


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